Professor J. W. McLaughlin, M. D. 
75 
of securing this appropriation was characteristic of the man. He 
induced the Regents, during one of their meetings at Galveston, to 
visit his little laboratory, which seemed little more than a small 
room with a few inconspicuous instruments. After their entrance, 
the doctor began to explain the advantages of a modern laboratory, 
but soon one of the Regents interrupted him and asked to be shown 
this laboratory. Then the doctor, in his gentle way, said: “Gentle- 
men, you are now in the clinical laboratory of the University, and 
you behold all of our splendid equipment.” The appropriation was 
forthcoming at once. 
Dr. McLaughlin probably deserved the credit of having introduced 
the recitation method in the teaching of the medical department of 
the University of Texas. This is the method in operation at Harvard, 
Johns Hopkins and some other of the larger schools. He was very 
successful in employing it, and was regarded as one of the most in- 
spiring teachers by his students, and by them was greatly beloved. 
Many of the best young doctors in Texas today look back with grati- 
tude to J. W. McLaughlin for his helpful and inspiring teaching and 
for his sympathy, kindness and help as a man. 
He was also distinguished for the consideration shown his patients 
who served as subjects for clinical instruction in the hospital under 
his charge. Though they were entirely at his disposal, his treatment 
of them was so kind and generous that they failed to realize that 
they were being used merely as instruments for helping others with- 
out consideration of their own unfortunate state. 
Dr. McLaughlin was a fine example of the professor of the old 
school, thoroughly in love with his subject, anxious to teach it by 
the best methods, full of kindly interest in his students and of a 
broad, gentle consideration for those with whom he came in contact 
in his work. 
As a practicing physician, J. W. McLaughlin’s specialty was diag- 
nostics. No field could have been better suited to his genius. His 
vivid conception of the vital organism as a whole and in all its 
functions, his acute and balanced judgment and his wonderful in- 
tuitive grasp of a situation, both in its entirety and its complex re- 
lations, placed him as a diagnostician in the class of Osier and Jane- 
way. I believe that all brother practitioners who have called him in 
consultation will agree in this estimate of McLaughlin’s pre-eminent 
ability as a diagnostician. But it was in his general practice as a 
family physician that the full greatness of the man best appeared. 
Although a modern of moderhs in scientific progress, in his pro- 
fessional attitude, he was a doctor of the best old style, who not 
only diagnosed and prescribed remedial agencies for members of the 
